Presently, when multiple users within an organization (e.g., a corporation, enterprise, or university) define various terms for documentation projects (e.g., user assistance, legal, or educational documents), these users usually construct their own terminologies without regard to other users' terminologies. Unfortunately, various users within the organization often cannot effectively share terms and definitions across the organization. The inability to share terms and definitions across the organization results in an inefficient workflow among users who develop documentation projects.
Further complicating the problem, users within the same organization often use inconsistent terms and definitions, which makes localization of terminologies and glossaries difficult. For example, a German localizer attempting to translate a glossary from English to German may identify two different terms (e.g., “shortcut key” and “keyboard shortcut”) that describe the same concept. In this case, the German localizer has to decide if either or both of these terms properly describe the concept. Because existing systems and methods do not provide a mechanism for effectively managing terminology and glossary data, different users within the organization may not properly use a consistent term to describe a single concept. Therefore, the organization may incur a larger cost to localize terminologies and glossaries.
To accomplish consistent terminology usage within an organization and to reduce the localization costs associated with developing and managing terminologies and glossaries, there is a desire for a technique to share terms and definitions across the organization. Moreover, some users within the organization may fail to properly document their terminology. Thus, there is also a desire for a technique to capture undocumented terms and definitions for localization purposes. By capturing and documenting terminologies and glossaries, the organization may reduce the localization costs and the efforts to rewrite definitions multiple times. Currently, to perform such data sharing and localization, the organization may have an editor or writer who visits various documentations (e.g., websites) to redefine and/or document different terms for consistent terminology usage.
Presently, three classes of tools are available to help an organization to create terminologies and glossaries. First, help developing tools are designed for an organization to build glossaries for software products, print products, and websites. These help developing tools usually create an alphabetical list of terms and definitions as a reference item in a product. The list of terms and definitions created by these help developing tools are usually in a single language. Examples of such help developing tools include RoboHelp® of Macromedia®, WinHelp®, and Doc-To-Help® of ComponentOne®.
Second, enterprise terminology management tools are available for an organization to manage and control the organization's multilingual terminology. These tools are built on a database and may be part of a larger suite of tools. However, these enterprise terminology management tools may or may not have the ability to build individual glossaries. In addition, such enterprise terminology management tools are not Web-based application tools. Examples of such tools include SAP®'s SAPterm (sold as part of SAP® Knowledge Warehouse) and IBM Corporation's company-wide terminology and glossary database application called TransLexis®.
The third class of tools is enterprise terminology management tools that are sold individually. These tools are built on a database and may be part of a larger suite of tools. Most of these tools are sold by the localization industry and are mainly for multilingual use (e.g., concept-based systems). Examples include TRADOS®'s MultiTerm® and STAR AG's TermStar®. MultiTerme® is a partially concept-based tool that associates translations of a term with a single definition and that allows a user to search terms in other languages and to customize metadata attached to various entries. TermStar® is a scalable, multilingual database that is concept-based.
Nevertheless, these classes of tools do not have some of the features that allow centralized development and management of terminologies and glossaries to provide consistent and rational terminology usage among multiple users, for example, in an organization.
Accordingly, a solution that allows centralized development and management of terminologies and glossaries within an organization is desired.